Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 86 posts

Re: The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

#31

Post by Crito »

tptacek wrote: post #23
Crito wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh fucking christ, I am not having the conversation in two places at once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7110399 My comparison between Hacker Panic to the War on Terror is not meant to imply that a few teenagers getting sent to prison for decades is equivalent in any respect to raining missiles down on wedding parties. It is a statement about the motivation of the people driving it. It isn't motivated by fear…

Which teenagers in prison for decades were you referring to?

I did not have any specific case in mind, and undoubtedly you are now going to nitpick at me and tell me that there are no cases like that.

I meant it as a throw-away example of harm that could conceivably be caused by Hacker Panic to emphasis the absurd difference between the severity of Hacker Panic and the severity of the War on Terror.

Just to make you happy though, here, I'll fix it:

> "My comparison between Hacker Panic to the War on Terror is not meant to imply that a few teenagers being scolded by cops is equivalent in any respect to raining missiles down on wedding parties."

Re: The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

#34

Post by klez »

Could someone please help me understand how can changing a headline on some websites cause five-figures damages?

Honest question, really. Every time I see articles about computer vandalism or hacking I see these big numbers and don't understand how they are calculated.

Re: The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

#35

Post by tptacek »

bernardom wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. And if they paid forensic analysts to track down the breach, they got the deal of a lifetime; we don't do that kind of work, but of course work with other firms that do, and $15k is below table stakes for that kind of work. A high-profile forensics investigation can clear 50k easy. And again, while cost accelerators on sentences are disquieting and a serious problem, they're not the fulcrum for Key…

Sideways-related question. What if Tribune had a sister company in some other country (Australia) that did something completely unrelated. Sell children's toys or something. An admin for the sister company gives up his credentials in order for Anonymous to deface the children's site. They instead use it to deface the Chicago Tribune. The admin has no earthly clue that the systems are inter-related. In fact, they've b…

As I understand it, he's guilty, but potentially not as guilty.

He's an accomplice if he understood the goals of Anonymous, gave them credentials to further their acts, but didn't map out with them exactly what they were going to do --- accomplice liability is for all intents in purposes liability.

On the other hand, if he casually gave them credentials because what the fuck who cares, and had no understanding that Anonymous might deface a website, he have lesser liability, or might not be liable for the defacement of the website while remaining liable for a reduced or lesser number of CFAA charges.

Re: The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

#36

Post by stretchwithme »

tptacek wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article goes off the rails with this sentence: "As a country and a criminal justice system, we’ve been down this road of excessive punishment before: with drugs." There's no particularly strong connection between computer crimes and drug crimes. As you point out, the comparison is hyperbole, and ignores the deep racial, cultural, and class conflicts at the heart of the drug war. None of those things are really ap…

I've been idly working on an essay for... I don't know, 5 years now? about how computers and the Internet catalyze harm, by shielding people who cause harm from the impact of their action, and by making harmful actions practically indistinguishable from benign ones --- "click this button and 'like' someone on Facebook, click this other button and help DDoS someone whose politics you disagree with". I have some sympat…

Just wait until someone tells a robot to go out and gather carbon compounds.

Re: The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

#37

Post by tptacek »

klez wrote: post #34

Could someone please help me understand how can changing a headline on some websites cause five-figures damages? Honest question, really. Every time I see articles about computer vandalism or hacking I see these big numbers and don't understand how they are calculated.

Straightforward.

* Employees of the company spend X number of days responding to the incident, and you take their fully loaded cost and divide it out by the number of days they spent having to deal with the incident, and that's a big number. Plus:

* If the site is disabled or degraded, you can often easily calculate outage costs based on the average volume of revenue the site generates during the outage period. Plus:

* In a high-profile incident, outside professionals will often need to come in, first because insurance and contracts require a full investigation, and second because once a site is compromised you have to assume there are backdoors that will restore access for the attackers in the future. The cost of an external forensics investigation can hit mid-5-figures by itself very easily. Plus:

* A high-profile incident is inevitably going to involve legal fees for the victim.

That's before you get into things like reputation damage, loss of clients/customers/advertisers, &c.

Like I said upthread, $10k-$20k damages for the defacement of one of the largest newspaper websites in the world sounds like a very low figure to me. I don't mean that in a normative sense. I mean, in the positive, descriptive sense, that sounds like less than what these incidents usually actually cost to their victims.

Re: The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

#38

Post by tptacek »

stretchwithme wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been idly working on an essay for... I don't know, 5 years now? about how computers and the Internet catalyze harm, by shielding people who cause harm from the impact of their action, and by making harmful actions practically indistinguishable from benign ones --- "click this button and 'like' someone on Facebook, click this other button and help DDoS someone whose politics you disagree with". I have some sympat…

Just wait until someone tells a robot to go out and gather carbon compounds.

Yes, that also sounds scary.

Re: The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

#40

Post by tptacek »

Crito wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which teenagers in prison for decades were you referring to?

I did not have any specific case in mind, and undoubtedly you are now going to nitpick at me and tell me that there are no cases like that. I meant it as a throw-away example of harm that could conceivably be caused by Hacker Panic to emphasis the absurd difference between the severity of Hacker Panic and the severity of the War on Terror . Just to make you happy though, here, I'll fix it: > "My comparison between Ha…

You said:

"My comparison between Hacker Panic to the War on Terror is not meant to imply that a few teenagers getting sent to prison for decades is equivalent in any respect to raining missiles down on wedding parties."

The observation that there may not be any teenagers that have spent a decade in custody, let alone several, is not a nitpick on that claim.

By way of comparison, Kevin Mitnick, a high-profile serial-offending adult about whom multiple books were written, spent 5 years in prison.

Post reply on HN